When evangelicals freaked out over the 2015 Religious Landscape Study

Way back in 2015, Pew Research came out with their devastating Religious Landscape Study. It finally convinced Christians that their religion was well and truly in decline. If you want to trace right-wing Christians’ current behavior to its roots, this study’s fallout should be part of your essential reading. This is where their worst modern tendencies really took hold: their polarization, their utter enslavement to Trumpist politics, their growing cruelty to those they deem inferior, even their slow morph into more of a conservative political identity than a religious one.

Today, let me show you a blast from the past. I wrote this post for the now-defunct blog Ex-Communications on May 13, 2015, right when the Religious Landscape Study became hot news. I’m thrilled to share it with you now, especially as we’re heading into some very familiar territory soon!

(Author’s Note: Back then, we were years away from so many evangelicals becoming tradcaths, or hyperconservative “traditionalist” Catholic converts. So we’ll mostly be discussing evangelicals today. But at the time, “conservative Christian” really meant evangelicals more than anyone else. Also, I’ve added some modern notes as well as tidied up the post for modern ease in reading.)

(This post first went live on Patreon on 8/25/2025. No audio voicecast for this one, sorry!)

PAST SITUATION REPORT: The 2014 Religious Landscape Study

The big news lately in the religion world is that Pew Research just release just released another of their huge surveys about religion, the 2014 Religious Landscape Study. Things are not looking good for Team Jesus. (This news release is recent, but it’s based on analyses of last year’s survey numbers.)

For years now, I’ve been talking about the dwindling population of Christians. Christianity is definitely having some problems keeping its membership numbers looking pretty. Its influence, power, dominance, and privilege dwindle right alongside membership numbers—and money.

Many factors influence this trend, not a single one of which are likely to change for the better. But all of them are likely to grow into even bigger influences on the religion’s numbers.

I’ve never thought Christians were particularly good at facing bad news. Hell, I’m not even sure they can even reliably perceive bad news. But I thought this survey was so straightforward that even the most dedicated ostriches in the religion would have to pull their heads out of the sand and finally pay attention to what’s been going on for the last ten years.

Well, color me wrong!

Some Christians will resort to any kind of evasion to avoid the truth. However, in these evasions I am seeing some answers about this huge change in people’s opinions about religion.

The Religious Landscape Study builds an evolving picture of a religion in decline

First, though, let’s talk about the earlier study Pew Research did. In 2007, they asked people what religion they were, what religion (or not) their homes of origin practiced, and a variety of other questions. The survey designers sought to measure who was staying in the religion and who was leaving it, when, and for what new religious destination.

The picture Pew Research painted in 2007 was of a population teetering on the verge of secularism. It was good news all the way around. It revealed that about 78% of the total American population was still Christian, with about 51% of Americans being Protestant, and 26% of Americans being evangelical. These figures come from the link up in the first paragraph.

Nones, those not affiliated with any religion (also known as the “none of the above” group), made up 16% of the country. About 4% of respondents identified as either atheist or agnostic.

That’s already amazing news. America, the country that evangelical pastors and Republican candidates screech constantly is “a Christian nation,” the culture that super-demonized atheists as the evilest things to ever walk the Earth on two feet, was at best 3/4 Christian. And I say “at best” because evangelicals don’t think most Christians are TRUE CHRISTIANS™ anyway.

Just to put that 16% figure into perspective, about 12% of the country identifies as African-American. About 10% of people are left-handed. This site says about 11% of Americans are afraid of the dark. So 16% might not sound like a lot, but it was actually pretty huge.

Those were the 2007 numbers. Now, let’s check out the 2014 numbers.

Christianity was a roller coaster at the top of its climb

The picture the 2014 paints is of a population starting to reach the top of the roller coaster’s first hill. If 2007 made my eyes widen, 2014 made them all but pop like I was in an old cartoon.

In a nutshell, Christianity is hemorrhaging members. I really don’t know how else to put it. Not only did Christians slide to 70% of the population from 78%, but Nones moved from 16% to almost 23%. Evangelicals slid from 26% to 25%, which means they’re just a couple percentage points ahead of the Nones. All denominations of Christianity are losing tons of members still, but the decrease is even sharper for the mainline and Catholic groups than it was in 2007.

In real numbers, that means that the actual number of Christians went from about 178 million people in America to about 172 million. America now contains about five million fewer mainline Protestants than there were seven years ago, as well as four million fewer Catholics.

[2025 Note: According to the most recent Pew Research numbers, 62% of Americans now identify as Christians, down from 70% in 2014 and 78% in 2007. 19% of adults are now Catholics, down from 20% in 2014 and 23% in 2007. Evangelicals slid to 23% of US adults in 2024, down from 25.4% in 2014 and 26.3% in 2007. With America’s population growing from 318M to 340M in that same time, these declines hit Christianity even harder.]

The ever-shrinking religious pie

The only bright spot for Christians might be that evangelicals are hemorrhaging less than the other groups are, even though they’re all losing people.

Worse, it seems clear that evangelicals are not converting outsiders. Rather, they mostly poach new members from other Christian groups. They might also be pushing their own children to “confess their sins” at earlier ages, which means their few new converts are also being baptized at younger and younger ages (though that might just be my impression).

[2025 note: Nope. It was not at all “just my impression.” It was really happening. In the Southern Baptist Convention in 2013-2014, a “pastors’ task force” released a paper announcing that their denomination’s only growing demographic for baptisms was children aged 5 and younger. Children so young could only be adult members’ own children.]

There are about two million more total evangelicals in the overall number of Christians. But the pie itself is smaller now than it was seven years ago. Evangelicals are simply taking a bigger piece of what’s left.

The Religious Landscape Study doesn’t contain much to celebrate, for evangelicals

So there isn’t much in the Religious Landscape Study for evangelicals to celebrate. Their religion’s getting more polarized, is all. Their focus on extremely divisive culture-war issues appeals to the worst elements in their fanbase, but it’s a reliable way to maintain their hold on people. [2025 Note: And it sells even better to that crowd nowadays.]

Amusingly, Jews, Muslims, and non-Judeo-Christian religions gained ever so slightly. And stunningly, there are not only more Nones, but more of them identify as agnostics and atheists.

Christian leaders have been freaking out about Nones for a while now, so I knew that Pew Research would want to take a serious look at the group in 2014 like it did in 2007. Indeed, some encouraging facts came out of the two surveys, especially about diversity. The group is becoming much more diverse in every single direction: more women, more people of color, more older folks, more people at all wealth levels and educations. It’s an amazing story all the way around. Nones still skew white, male, and fairly young, but take a look. Some neat stuff is happening with Nones.

[2025 Note: As of 2024 data, 29% of American adults are unaffiliated, a continued rise from 22.8% in 2014 and 16.1% in 2007.]

The evangelical response to this news

But I’m not sure Christians understand the gravity of what this survey has discovered—or believe what they see.

Some of them are just denying that the survey is at all accurate. Christianity Today (CT) complained that the survey didn’t correctly define “evangelicals.” As they see it, the problem is that evangelicals—which that magazine would likely consider the only TRUE CHRISTIANS™—weren’t correctly counted.

This reminds me a little of how I heard a Christian minister explain why Christian divorce rates look pretty much like non-Christian ones. He claimed that TRUE CHRISTIANS™ would never get divorced. So obviously, any Christian who got divorced wasn’t a real one and should not be counted as Christian. The contortion shocked me the first time I heard it! But since then, I’ve heard a number of Christians trot it out over a number of issues.

Pew Research defines evangelicals in the way that most evangelicals define themselves. They just identify as such! And CT and other Christian leaders seem content to count those “fake” evangelicals when they’re talking about numerical superiority. CT did exactly this a few months after stamping its feet about all those false evangelicals messing up the survey results.

One must almost admire the mental gymnastics required to get from “Evangelicals aren’t being counted right at all in this survey” to “evangelicals are totally still totally kicking ass in America.” Just imagine their worried editors nervously reassuring their indignant flocks that all is well!

Additionally, one Christian saw the survey and decided it meant that atheists actually secretly believe in some kind of god. Tobin Grant wrote this column, called “Why so-called atheists believe in God, Heaven, and even the Bible.” Of course, he never explains why atheists might have answered some of Pew Research’s questions as they did.

Begun, the blame game has

When a Christian can be forced to look squarely at the numbers involved here, they blame absolutely everything except what’s really behind people’s decisions to leave Christianity. And they insult those who leave while they’re at it.

In 2014, one BBC opinion writer, for example, sniffed about how kids today are all “theological illiterates” (except for Mormons, which mystified him). Yes, he insists, kids today just want “pseudo-religion” that makes them feel good and requires no investment of time, energy, or resources “unless one needs something.”

With friends like those, who ever needs enemies?

[2025 bonus note: I think that BBC op-ed writer was Rod Dreher! He wasn’t really on my radar in 2015.]

Interestingly, in that same link another writer (an ex-Christian) thinks that so many people are leaving Christianity because of anti-LGBT bigotry. It wouldn’t surprise me, either. LGBT rights are tied up in all sorts of other cultural beliefs and practices in Christianity. So a Christian who denies LGBT people their rights probably also buys into a lot of other toxic ideas.

That bigotry even ties into science denial. Christians who hold such views also mistakenly think that LGBT people made a “lifestyle choice” that can be altered with effort. LGBT people are, of course, apparently obligated to perform that effort to evangelicals’ satisfaction.

[2025 Note: Yep, anti-LGBT bigotry in particular has led large numbers of people to leave Christian groups. A steady drumbeat of articles and surveys confirms that opinion.]

Sidebar: The Religious Landscape Survey reveals that evangelical bigotry is starting to bite Christianity in the butt

Here, as well, evangelical Christians shine in their utter inability to understand and evaluate cultural trends. They know equal marriage is happening despite every bit of their kicking and screaming. But they don’t really understand yet what it means for them.

One right-wing evangelical, David French, summed up what I saw a number of Christians saying when he rather snidely wrote, “If you want to destroy your church, follow liberals’ advice.” He blames liberalization—exemplified by treating LGBT people like Americans with the same rights that he gets—for the loss in dominance he sees happening in his religion.

I suspect I could tell him what’s really going on. But I know it wouldn’t help. Nothing gets between a right-wing evangelical and his cherished delusions of persecution. To borrow a metaphor from Bill Mauldin, the brilliant WWII cartoonist, such people are like a dog that got hurt when he ran out into the street to chase cars. We’re sad that the little guy is in pain. But you know it wouldn’t be happening if he hadn’t misbehaved in the first place!

[2025 Note: David French is still an odious culture warrior, but he’s gone anti-Trump since 2015. Broken clocks are still correct twice a day, and all that.]

It could well be that all the bullying right-wing Christians have been doing—which has only grown more laughably hysterical and bizarrely out of touch with reality with every passing month—has finally become the final nail in the coffin of Christianity’s power over others. I see it as similar to how the pedophilia scandal has finally broken the back of the Catholic Church.

Don’t mistake desperation for strength

It will still likely be many years before we really see the fallout of these cultural changes. Christian leaders still have their clawed hands around the throat of America and are getting even more outspoken about exerting force as they feel their onetime control slipping away. But the truth is that their hands are weak and feeble. Don’t mistake desperation for strength. The writing is on the wall here.

But all these Christians I’ve described here are planning a strategy that they hope will—if not reverse this tide—at least staunch the flow of people from their groups. You’ve even seen a hint of it in what I’ve discussed here today.

In response to their decline, evangelicals are busy trying to create a stronger identity for their group. [2025 Note: They’re also pushing harder on culture-war platforms like new anti-abortion crusades and even a push to end marriage equality. These culture wars, if won, would coincidentally enshrine evangelical control-grabs into law. They seem okay with having way fewer members but way more temporal power.]

They can’t prove Christianity’s claims are objectively true, after all. And they sure aren’t going to give up on their two most cherished culture wars (against women’s rights and LGBT rights). They won’t admit they were in the wrong in mistreating others all these years. They’re definitely not willing to give up their delusions of superiority and their naked lust for power and control.

So instead, they’ve got to make it harder for people to question their indoctrination—a questioning that all too often leads to people leaving religion, or at least evangelicalism, behind. Identity formation is how I see them doing it. That will be their strategy moving forward.

[2025 Note: Yep, that is exactly what’s happening, too. Evangelicals are all about “discipleship” now. They think this highly-controlling church structure will keep butts in pews. It’s funny to me that all that lovey-dovey stuff goes out the window when shit gets real—and normies finally see evangelicals for who and what they truly are.]

NEXT UP: Another blast from the past, but this one just happened: another evangelical complaining about their strawman version of atheism. See you soon! <3

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